16,425 stray dogs lynched

LAHORE - Public Health Department (PHD) of the City District Government (CDG) has killed 16,425 stray dogs in year 2009, but still hundreds are roaming in the streets of the metropolis, posing a threat of eruption of rabies.
According to a report of the PHD, the dogs killing teams comprising the officials of the Health Department and sanitary workers of the SWM killed 10,062 stray dogs by poison while 6,363 dogs were shot dead by gun in 2009.
PHD District Officer (DO) Dr Shahid Akram while talking to the this scribe said that it was not easy to catch and kill stray dogs, as they keep changing their place. He said the Department was short of staff, and it had to take help from the Solid Waste Management (SWM) Town Municipal Administrations (TMAs) to trace and kill dogs. He added that it would be much better if the task of killing stray dogs be handed over to the SWM Department, as they had a huge network all over the City.
Talking about the public attitude about dogs, the DO noted that public was divided on the issue of killing stray dogs, as people had uncalled-for sympathies for dogs and they objected to killing even stray dogs in streets. He said that on several occasion people quarrel with the dogs killing teams saying it had been morally wrong to kill them.
He further said that number of stray dogs was increasing in the City despite the fact that thousands of dogs had been killed during dog killing campaigns in the past. About a question he said that bottlenecks in the coordination between the SWM and PHD were causing rupture in the plans to eliminate all stray dogs.
About pet dogs, he said that people kept dogs as pets, but many dogs were being immunised.
Dogs killing teams keep going in all 150 UCs and about 100 stray dogs are killed daily despite this, dogs are not ending, and they can be seen moving here and there, he said. Later, sanitary workers of the SWM carry the dead dogs in their trucks to unknown places with the metropolis waste, he added.
It has been learnt that SWM staff including sanitary workers throw dead dogs on the sand near the banks of River Ravi or on the heaps of garbage at Mehmood Booti.
Official sources revealed that dead dogs rot in the heaps of solid waste in the open air, causing a bad smell. The dead dogs on the waste heaps are posing threats to the health of the people.